Sonic Retro fuck yeah

Over the past few weeks or so, we here at Sonic Retro have been imploring our userbase to buy the new Sonic CD for Everything this holiday season–not so much because it’s a good game (and don’t get me wrong, it’s fantastic!), but because we really want to support the concept behind the release. From having a port done with care to having one of our own doing the work to paying attention to lesser-known titles, Sonic CD, this release is kind of a big deal.

By financially supporting these sorts of releases, it sends a very clear message to Sega that we want to see more things done right and by awesome people. If the game sells a million copies, for instance, it shows that licensing the Retro Engine is more financially advantageous than just slapping a hq3x emulated version up for sale. It shows that people are willing to support adding features to a port to give it new life. It shows that we’re not all dicks who pirate everything and just have a bone to pick.

Beyond that, though, it lets people who may mock the Sonic series see that yes, there were legitimately good games that made us all fans. Odds are if you read a site as shall we say, dedicated, as Sonic Retro, you’re pretty read up on video games. Your real-world friends know you as that gamer gal or guy. So this season, we want you to share the love.

Give your family, friends, and loved ones who are into video games a copy of Sonic CD. Let your girlfriend see what the big deal about platformers is by getting a copy for her iPhone. Give your FPS-loving bros a copy over XBLA or PSN to show them that the franchise isn’t all Shadow the Hedgehog and the 2006 Sonic the Hedgehog. Call up your childhood friends who you played Sonic 2 and S3K two-player mode with and let them relive the nostalgia with a Steam gift of Sonic CD.

“But Scarred Sun,” you say, “I need to buy Sonic CD, too!”

Well, duh, of course you do. But we’re willing to help you out there. Because it is always more fulfilling to give than to get, we want to give you copies of Sonic CD this holiday season–that’s why we’ve bought a dozen copies to give to our users. We want to hear your stories of giving Sonic CD to others; in return, we’ll pick the best entries and gift you a copy over Steam for your own account (sorry XBLA/PSN people–we haven’t found a way to just gift you the correct amount for the game or else we’d go that path as well.) Leave your story in the comments, and if we hear anything particular heart-touching/funny/nostalgia-y, we’ll hook you up so you can get a copy on Day One of the Steam release.

Besides, there’s nothing wrong with being evangelical about one of the best Sonic titles ever produced. Happy holidays!

Rather than harassing people every month about the cost of Sega/Sonic Retro, I figure it’d be far nicer to just ask once a year for you to donate—it’s far less annoying for all parties. Given that most of you seem to have a few extra bucks in the summertime, I figure there’s no better time than now.

We here at Sonic Retro try our best to provide you with information and entertainment on a number of different mediums, from our front page news updates to our extensive archives of knowledge to the forums, IRC and podcasts. Considering that we do not put advertising on any of these products nor does anyone on staff get paid to produce these things, we’re offering you a lot for free both in terms of resources and labor. In exchange, all we ask is that you chip in to help us pay to bring these services to you.

Our current costs per operating year are:

$600 – Retro Server: This covers the electricity and bandwidth costs (currently 1.5TB at 100Mbps) for our main server, which hosts the website.

$240 – Badnik Server: This covers the entirety of BadnikNET IRC, as well as support functions for the Retro server

$50 – IPB license: This keeps our board software license in good standing and keeps us eligible for patches and upgrades

$50 – Domains: This covers our renewals for the domains we have, as well as an extra domain that may be purchased next year

That brings us to $940 a year. Normally, I just grab the Badnik costs out of pocket, so that brings the bill to $700. If you could help by sending us money to cover these costs, it would be greatly appreciated.

When we occasionally have more funds than our operating costs, we use the excess money to purchase goods and services that help the Retro community. Some of the many things I have paid for this last year include shipping foreign goods to members in other countries so they can produce scans and photos, paying international library fees, and buying products to scan. Many of these items tend to pop up on a random basis on auction sites and it always handy to have money to cover these costs. The only thing I know right now that I do want is a 50-page Sega slot machine service manual to scan and distribute, which runs around $25.

In addition to the server expenses I mentioned earlier, I am interested in purchasing some t-shirts to sell for fundraising in the future (most likely a brown/black/blue run of shirts with the Retro star logo and/or a blue shirt with the 1960s-style Sega logo on it.) However, I would need to know if you guys are interested in buying such shirts (which would be between $12 and $15 plus shipping depending on how many I could order at one time.) I’m friends with a company that does professional merchandise for many well-known bands, so this isn’t shoddy shit—these are nice, high-quality American Apparel or Alternative Apparel shirts.

What’s in it for me?

If you donate between now and July 15, you will receive:

“Best Member Ever” achievement, if you do not already have it

A special achievement for the donation drive

Three Retro 1″ pins (if you donate $10 or more)

A prize from our prize pool of t-shirts, games, books and more (if you donate over a certain amount to be determined—probably $25-30)

Two extra-special prizes for the top two donators

You can donate by using my PayPal address of [email protected] or using this donation page to donate by credit/debit card or bank account. Thank you for donating to support Retro! Your donations are the fuel that powers our Speedboat of Awesome.

We recently noticed that our AWStats statistics page listed a user running Mac OS X 10.7. As most of you are aware, the current version of Mac OS X is 10.6, so we decided to take a closer look. Upon closer inspection of the HTTP logs, we found this entry:

The IP range 17.x.x.x/8 is owned by none other than Apple, Inc. It seems that an Apple employee was researching the SNASM68k assembler for some reason. It may have something to do with compatibility with older Macintosh models, since the Macintosh line used the original Motorola 68000 CPU series up until the PowerPC CPU was created in 1991. (Compatibility with 68000 CPUs was dropped starting wtih Mac OS 8.5, and compatibility with 68000 applications was dropped entirely with Mac OS X 10.0.)

Incidentally, as of this writing, Sonic Retro’s SNASM68K page is currently the #1 hit on Google for “SNASM”.